For our weekly meander through mendacity, we turn to no less than Gotham Chamber Opera’s own Neal Goren (not pictured), who writes, “People repeat as fact that women ruin their voices, or at least sacrifice their high notes, by singing in chest voice. So untrue!”

Chest nut Charlie Handelman has so much to say on “voce di petto” that he devoted twopodcasts to the topic..

Your doyenne recently babbled:

The big Verdi roles are written to include phrases that call for chest resonance. If Verdi had been writing for singers who didnâ€™t have access to chest voice, he would have written the music differently. As, for example, the “Miserere” in Trovatore where the specific sound of chest tones is necessary for the correct sonority.

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Verdi soprano roles cannot be sung “effectively” without some use of chest resonance, because by definition a part of the â€œeffectâ€ of low-lying passages depends on the change of color attendant on the change of resonance.

ElectricÂ Elaine Eliane Coelho chews the scenery, leaves blood on the stage, and if there are any pregnant women in the audience, probably turns their fetuses gay right on the spot, all in just one scene from the gloriously gory melodrama from Carlos Gomes, Maria Tudor. Since YouTube embedding is acting a little odd this morning, La Cieca will link directly to the video’s YouTube page. According to the synopsis of the plot of Maria Tudor, at this moment Queen Maria has just discovered that her lover Fabio Fabiani has been disguising himself as a simple student in order to seduce […]